


In the Darkness Comes Another

by Nighthaunting



Category: Warhammer - All Media Types, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: M/M, Not really graphic, just convoluted, magnus needs to learn to use his words, more fiction friday, russ is waiting but not very patiently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6796666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/pseuds/Nighthaunting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>magnus is in deep, and he knows, but not well enough</p>
<p> </p>
<p>convoluted shippy nonsense for the prompt: “A kiss that was regretted”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Darkness Comes Another

**Author's Note:**

> 'my heart, it screams'
> 
> title from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LJtMrhb558

Magnus has never thought of himself as bitter. He speaks endlessly of growth and discovery and self-realization. Meditation. It helps focus him, it helps him contain himself instead of spreading and spreading out until he transmutes through dispersal from one being into a tuning fork for the empyrean. Magnus is never so ready to throw it all away than when he’s faced with Russ in all his confounding majesty. 

It isn’t hatred. Magnus is exactingly, excruciatingly honest with himself about how he feels about Russ, because if he allows his feelings to slip undefined through his fingers without being categorized and meditated on and picked over they steal over his senses like a fog. Like smoke he breathes in; rising into his eye and nose and mouth from the ashes of a fire he’s planted his feet in and refused to step out of. Like the light-lined mist that creeps out between the trees in the hard slanting hour of dawn, throwing shadows in midair and obscuring enough to obscure nothing. Honesty is, at this point, a safety precaution. 

Magnus doesn’t hate Russ, but he’s infuriated by him. Magnus doesn’t hate Russ, he’s fascinated by him. Fascination-fury that threads into his lungs when he breathes and exhales as petulant, empty-headed defensiveness. Magnus does hate Russ and he hates him because Russ makes him hate himself. For every burning instant when Russ is speaking to him–-languid and golden-eyed: as though Magnus is nothing; as though he can’t be bothered; as though he’s untouchable and unthreatenable and unmoved by anything less than the movement of time in geologic eras-–and Magnus sees some opening, a split-second to say anything that will bridge the gap, and doesn’t take it. For every slivered fractal of a conversation where Magnus stares into Russ hard enough to see that his storm-edged shadow doesn’t match the shape he presents to the galaxy, and lets dark revelation swallow up his ability to be a bigger person. 

Magnus has gazed long into the abyss and the abyss has grinned in a forced show of teeth and deliberately misinterpreted everything he says to start an argument. 

Magnus long ago mastered the art of self-delusion, and uses it often. He absolutely hates Leman Russ with every fiber of his being. When they’re forced to share space his mind and body sings with it. His constant attempts to talk to Russ are a highly-advanced form of self-flagellation; honed by every wretched, hanging instant when Russ’ eyes sharpen minutely and he looks as though he might finally take Magnus seriously instead of the undertow mantra of _deflect deflect deflect_ that seems to drive every social interaction Magnus has ever seen Russ engaged in. Sometimes it occurs to Magnus that perhaps Russ is uncomfortable with the levels of scrutiny Magnus subjects him to, even if Magnus has never shared these rough little crumbs of the suggestion of secret depth with another living soul and would rather gouge out his remaining eye than do so. To tell would be an admission of his own guilt. 

There is a damning suspicion that rises up between them when they are alone. Magnus has never seen the careful not-self that Russ wears flex and shiver and warp more than when they’re alone. Russ has watching eyes. Nothing else on his face can be trusted, and perhaps his eyes can’t be trusted either, but in all the time Magnus has spent weighted down and drowned by his devotion-obsession-fascination-fury he has watched Russ’ eyes and never seen them change. Magnus is useless when he’s given a puzzle, he can never put them down until he’s solved them, even if it takes years or decades or centuries. Even if he has to set it aside and wait for it to deign be alone with him for a few moments when he can bend everything he has to revealing one more piece before it gets snatched away again. And again. And again. Russ has watching eyes that never change, and sometimes when he and Magnus are alone for a ragged breath of time, his face smooths out and Magnus can see the very fine edges where a mask sits flush and opaque over the truth of him. Whenever Magnus sees he can’t help himself from trying to squirm his fingers into the gap–a tiny hairsbreadth between what Russ is willing to show him and what Russ is–and pry and pry and pry at it until it comes away. 

This has never worked. Magnus is a man who has never believed in the conventional wisdom of not putting your hand where you can’t see. Every time Magnus tries he’s granted one more small piece of a whole that he’s never seen, and the edge cuts him like a razor when he tries to hold on and take more. Magnus is a man who has always believed in the conventional wisdom that there is a price to be paid for knowledge. He has simply always tried to avoid paying it. He can avoid nothing with Russ, who operates in a system where there must always be something given, and blood is not merely acceptable but preferred. At the end of his minuscule window of opportunity, Magnus finds himself always with one gloaming glimpse of a rime-edged something more and an equal hurt to show for it. 

There are times, few and far between, when Magnus imagines what it would be like to simply ask for the truth. He wonders if this is what Russ is waiting for, or if actually putting words to the air about the shivering thread that runs between them would seal Russ away from him altogether. 

Magnus can avoid nothing with Russ, who operates in a system where there must always be something given, and blood is not merely acceptable but preferred. There are times, few and far between, when Magnus has bled too freely for the privilege he takes, and Russ’ not-self not-mask warps and folds away around the edges of his eyes. It terrifies Magnus when it happens, because he becomes aware that some day, in fact, he might solve the puzzle after all, and that it is not merely a puzzle he is solving, but Russ himself. 

Russ’ eyes are the truth of him: ice-gold and always, always watching. When Magnus sees them plainly, they’re predatory and too knowing; heavy-lidded and hypnotizing. The ragged breath of a moment Magnus has stolen–-and will steal, again and again and again-–becomes a sigh, and Russ leans in and pays back his torments with the brush of his lips. Where time stretches and loops and warps, and for that moment Magnus falls and is helpless; undone in a kiss that drags through him like an eternity. 

Magnus tries not to think of himself as bitter, but the taste of Russ’ mouth in the moment before he pulls away is. The look in Russ’ eyes as time starts again, as the smoke recedes, is the same as it ever was. Watching, from behind a not-mask of his not-self; marking the progress of a man foolish enough to try and love what’s underneath. Magnus is never so ready to throw it all away than when he’s faced with Russ in all his confounding majesty. 

Magnus is useless when he’s given a puzzle, he can never put them down until he’s solved them, even if it takes years or decades or centuries. 

Sometimes he wishes he could.


End file.
